We will be going over building your own home lab utilizing low-cost but high-value hardware. (Think along the lines of re-purposing headless network appliances that have gone out of warranty / support and can no longer serve their intended function ((Riverbed for example...most are low power 8 core Xeons that make fantastic hypervisors)) This includes everything from hypervisor platforms (Compute..most CPU for your buck....CPU's often overlooked), storage (Local, DAS trays, you name it), networking (Open platform software routers, cheap enterprise gear that falls through the cracks), racking and mounting (Yup, we can rack-mount on the cheap) and even some cheap cabling / optical options to go up to 10Gb and beyond. We'll identify the potential uses for the Homelab, as well as the pitfalls that we've run into along the way (noise, power usage, wife acceptance factor, etc.) The advantages of a Homelab are obvious, but sometimes it takes a little help knowing on how and where to get started. We'll get you dumpster diving / and thinking outside the box in no time.